Meta

September Writing Challenge, Post 24: Three Things I Wish American Tech Culture Would Learn

Note: I’ve had a couple things holding my attention this week, and as a result missed a couple of days of the writing challenge. I’ll catch up.

One more note: I’m having a slightly rant day. Bear with me.

There are a bunch of things that could be done to make the tech culture more sane and humane. Here are three that rank highly on my list:

1. Working more hours does not necessarily make you more productive.In fact, it may make you far, far less so. We work in one of the few professions where it is possible to do negative work on a daily basis – that is, to make the code worse than we left it. We are more likely to do this when we work long hours. Unfortunately, both American work culture and the tech subculture seek to twist overwork into a virtue. It’s not. Overwork leads to bad decisions. If your boss doesn’t understand this, give him the slide deck I linked earlier in this paragraph (which contains a ton of researched information on productivity topics beyond just hours). If he willfully ignores the facts and says he doesn’t believe it, go work for someone smarter, and let him fail on someone else’s broken back. Also: If you think you’re somehow the exception to this, you’re not. There’s ample research out there – I urge you to look it up.

2. Trading sleep for work just makes you dumber, not more productive. This goes hand-in-hand with the issue of long hours; as with overwork, our culture makes a badge of honor out of sleep deprivation. (I was guilty of this myself when I was younger.) When we don’t get enough sleep, it degrades the quality of our work, and our ability to notice how much our work has degraded. This may be a reason so many people think they’re exceptional in this regard. Spoiler: They’re not. Again, there’s loads of research; Google is your friend.

3. The software profession is not a meritocracy. At least, it’s not if you’re black or a woman. This is made worse by the fact that white guys in the profession often think they’re too smart to have unconscious biases about race, gender, sexuality, &c. It’s made worse still by the fact that most of us in the profession who are any good at it actually did work hard to get there, and feel there’s merit in the rewards we’ve gathered. But if it’s not a meritocracy for everyone, it’s not a meritocracy for anyone, and those of us on the inside need to check our privilege and start examining our own behavior.